It's true. If I never wanted to grow anything but kale, tomatoes, beans, parseley, cilantro, and oregano, I could dispense with all deliberate planting.
Missed dropped tomatoes, kale plants gone to flower, bean roots hibernating underground, my garden is full of potential. If the circumstances are right, as in the tiny kale forest below, up they pop.
I let the parsley go to seed because the bees like it. Bonus is I never have to deal with fiddly parsley seeds and their picky germination requirements. Apparently, benign neglect is the key.
There are downsides, I assume. I haven't figured out all of the succession keys yet, so I have either "all" or "none" as the settings. Remember the Tunnel of Cilantro?
I also can't really choose with any pinpoint accuracy where these plants will show up. True confession -- I may see parsley all over as I may have flailed some seedhead branches all around while singing a few weeks ago. . . "Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyyyyyyyyymmeee." Still, it's a generalized planting technique.
However, if you like serendipity, if you are lazy, and especially if you're willing to eat stuff when it feels like showing up -- I am still trying to force pint after pint of lovely Sungold cherry tomatoes on neighbors, and may hand them out as Halloween treats tomorrow -- I can heartily endorse it as a technique.
What pops up without effort in your garden?
4 comments:
Some of my biggest most beautiful bell peppers grew as volunteers this year. I guess I left some peppers to rot at the end of the season last year and a bunch of seeds germinated. I left a few of the seedlings that appeared and the plants grew bigger and better than the ones I intentionally grew. Lots of corn salad germinated but the voracious birds mowed them down. There's plenty of cilantro though and some huge parsley plants growing in the garden path and under the lemon tree. Oh yeah, let's not forget those beans - perhaps they will survive the winter and come back for a third round?
I can't get parsley to grow for the life of me, unless I buy it in a 4", let it go to seed, then I'll have parsey for the rest of time in random spots of the yard.
Michelle, I thought of your beans. My experience is that often the self-seeded plants fare absolutely the best.
Melissa, yep, if you can let go of the process, you get good stuff. I have seedheads if you want to thwack.
Quackgrass, pink jasmine, and wisteria. I curse the jerk who planted the last two. They are SO invasive. Ugh.
That said, I made dinner with the basil from my windowbox two nights ago!
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